Catholic Fiction

reviewed by Debra Murphy

"The late Isobel English was an exceptionally talented young novelist of the mid-1950s. Every Eye is one of her most successful and sensitively written books, a romantic yet unsentimental story of a young woman’s intricate relationships of family and love, intensely evocative of the period, remarkable in its observations of place and character."

—Muriel Spark

If you’ve never heard of Isobel English, don’t feel bad, I hadn’t either until this book, a reprint of English’s 1956 novel, was sent us by the publisher for review.

In some ways I can understand how it is that Isobel English has been flying under the literary radar, as it were, all these years, for Every Eye is in many ways a strange little book. But it’s a strange little book that packs a wallop. What did not surprise me, for instance, after reading it (which I did practically in a sitting, before turning round and re-reading it again in a sitting), was that the author suffered from intense migraines. English’s style displays an uncanny precision in the chiseling out of those small moments of life, which, seemingly random at the time, become disproportionately meaningful, even definitive for the development of a personality. This is an almost painfully laser-like focus I’ve heard migraine-sufferers experience prior to one of their attacks. Even when you, the reader, don’t know where English is leading you with these episodes (and I didn’t until almost the last page of the book), you are nonetheless transported for a while to a different time, a different place, a different state of mind, a different life.

In the case of Every Eye, the life is that of Hatty, a middle-aged piano teacher just married to a much younger man, remembering on her honeymoon to sunny Ibiza the moments that had brought her to her present state of resignation laced with frustration.

It isn’t the life Hatty had originally hoped for. A talented musician from a family of straightened means, Hatty’s youthful dream had been to become a concert pianist. Her ambitions had been progressively thwarted, however, by her own lack of confidence and the clumsy interventions of an aunt and uncle whose motives, as these things often are in families, are hidden from Hatty, the one most immediately affected.

The pivot point of that turn from ambition to resigned mediocrity occurs one afternoon while a teenaged Hatty is practicing the piano. Her newlywed Aunt and Uncle swoop in and demand to hear her play. "I’ll turn for you," her Uncle Otway says in the tone of a conspirator.

There was nothing I could do but begin. The opening bars were clear and uncluttered. I let the running legato of broken chords follow each other from hand to hand. There was no need to worry even when the right hand set up a counter-rhythm to the left; alone I could play it faultlessly….

I was conscious of heavy breathing at my neck; as I neared the last few bars on the page, a thickly furred hand shot out and swept it over. I had not counted on the violence of this intrusion. I struck a wrong note in a chord, and it went through my head like a gunshot. I did not stop but quickened the tempo in an effort to distract from the mistake. Then I started the slow measured movement that was a rest and respite after the swift flow of the previous passages. The breathing behind me was very close, almost it seemed to disturb and ruffle the short tufts of hair on the nape of my neck; it was nearing the time for the brown paw to strike again. In agitation I turned very slightly, hoping to indicate to Uncle Ot that I could manage on my own. He stood fast, and I saw in that second his eyes crinkle into a concerned smile.

Then I lost my place.

My hands stumbled about incoherently like strangers who had never before touched a keyboard….

This is writing as good as it gets. What sets English apart from other fine writers is her ability to render a character who, while thwarted, has yet retained enough courage, enough humanity, to continue the search for meaning behind her own bitternees; to long for resolution at least, if not renewal. Most contemporary writers would be content to narrate the despair of Hatty’s journey, make you feel it, then let her (and you, the reader) wallow in that metaphysical passivity, laziness really, which passes these days for "realism".

Woven into Every Eye, however, is a very quiet grace-building-on-nature thread of forgiveness—a forgiveness achieved through suffering, a sort of good-humored humility, and a courageous determination to—I don’t know how else to put it—pay attention; pay attention to those (again) seemingly unimportant but definitive little moments which most of us tragically fail to remark. This is where the Catholic element comes into English’s book, and it is done in a wholly unobtrusive—and surprising—way.

A beautiful, beautiful novel. Read it twice.

Every Eye, available from Amazon
hardcover, 192 pages, 4 3/4" x 6 3/4"
ISBN: 1-57423-199-5, $23.95 (retail, discounted many places online)
David R. Godine, Boston: 2006